


Hollow

by alexanderlightweight



Series: Michael Guerin Week 2019 [6]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Introspection, Lost Decade, M/M, Michael Guerin Week 2019, Self-Esteem Issues, Wishful Thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 08:09:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20739014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanderlightweight/pseuds/alexanderlightweight
Summary: Alex is gone, his siblings are strangers and Michael has a decade to live that's already lost before it's begun.





	Hollow

**Author's Note:**

> (Part of the Michael Guerin Week 2019)
> 
> Prompt: Pre-canon and/or “the lost decade”

Michael loses time.

He doesn’t mean to, it’s just easier.

UNM’s letter and their offer of a scholarship remains a pristine but ultimately worthless piece of hope, locked away in his glove box. It’s hidden behind a bottle of acetone and the gun he took at fifteen from his foster family.

By every star in the sky, Michael wishes he’d had that gun the night in the shed. A bullet to Jesse Manes head would have been a lot more explainable than using his powers.

He doesn’t want to wallow in regrets and what ifs. He does enough of that now, lying alone at night imagining how thinking would be different if only he’d taken Jesse out of the equation. Maybe Alex wouldn’t have left  _ -wouldn’t have needed to leave _ \- would still be with him. Those thoughts only leads to pain and he’s in enough pain, so instead he chugs acetone and swigs whiskey and weeks pass before he’s clear headed enough to think.

When he does, all he can remember is the stranger in Isobel’s face, looking at him with unfamiliar eyes as they snapped Rosa’s neck.

The bottles in his truck are empty the next time he wakes up.

-

He and Max are lying to Isobel but at the same time he and Isobel are lying to Max. It’s a circle of lies and the only constant that Michael can find is himself. 

Michael doesn’t have the powers that Isobel does. He doesn’t have the assurance that Liz really did want to leave, that Isobel just gave her a push, a tiny little push. He knows intimately how small of a nudge is needed when you’re on the edge, teetering over with no one to hold you back and no safety net to fall on.

It’s one more thing he knows he should feel guilty about, but it’s a burden he doesn’t have the strength to bear. He tells himself it was for the best, for all of them and he believes it. On his darker nights, he envies Liz. Is jealous of the fact that she got to leave all of this behind and make a new life, somewhere free of Roswell and it’s curse.

He shouldn’t feel that way but at this point he doesn’t care. After all, it’s not like he’s human. 

-

It takes months before either of his siblings will look at him when they talk to him. Isobel he understands, sort of. She thinks he lost control, that he murdered three people and that she helped him cover it up. Truthfully, he doesn’t mind her avoidance, not when he’s always afraid that when their eyes meet, he’ll see someone else looking back. 

It’s Max that hurts the most.

Max who knows the truth and agreed it was for the best. It didn’t take much convincing for him to help throw Michael under the bus and it took even less time for him to start ignoring Michael. Instead of being there for him  _ -and isn’t it a slap to the face when Max looks knowingly at him and says he’s going into law enforcement- _ Max has taken to making snide comments and giving disapproving stares. It’s like he thinks Michael should be able to simply snap his mangled fingers and magically become a law-abiding human with a good, stable future.

If Michael had abided by human rules, he’d either be dead or discovered and he knows the latter would be worse than death.

The guilt of their cover-up weighs on both of them and Michael knows he’s punishing himself, but lately it feels like that’s all Max does too.

Even during their childhood when they were drifting and separate, there had been this sense of solidarity. That he would always have a home and a place  _ in _ them, if not with them. Now, he’s not sure if he can ever still call them his siblings, or if they ever were. 

-

Bad impulses become worse habits become a fixed and hazy lifestyle and Michael resigns himself to wasting away on this fucked up planet, even as he desperately tries to build a way home.

-

Alex comes to him in fleeting moments that end all too swiftly. 

If Michael could, he’d hoard those memories and keep Alex away from the life that steals a bit of him each time. It’s not like Isobel, it’s still Alex who meets his eyes. It’s just that he hardens, calcifies and adds walls that Michael struggles to break, each time they meet.

Michael wants to raze Jesse Manes, war, the Airforce and everything that has ever stolen a moment of Alex away from him to the ground. He wants to steal Alex away, take them both to another world and life, one that is safe. This world full of secrets and hatred and lies and pain, it doesn’t love either of them.

Michael’s home is Alex and once, before duty got in their way, he’d have said he was Alex’s home.

Now, he just hopes that someday Alex will stop running and that Michael will learn to stop pushing. It’s hard not to push, when every time he does Alex’s eyes light up and a fighting, defiant spark returns. Michael lives for moments like those, even though he knows that in the end, it just ends with Alex a little further away than when they started. 

Because right now, there’s no place on this planet for him and his home is fighting far away. If there is one thing that Michael knows humanity got right, it’s their saying that home is where the heart is. 

Michael’s heart is his home, but his heart’s at war and his chest is hollow.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as [alexanderlightweight](https://alexanderlightweight.tumblr.com)


End file.
